Those who’ve entered the world of selling via an e-commerce website often ask, “How do I get new and returning customers to visit my site?” The answer is to build an e-commerce marketing plan based on who your customers are and where they spend their time online. Then delve into ways to reach them.

Social media is ideal for connecting directly with new and potential customers. Use it for broadcasting company news, engaging in conversations, and advertising your products. And now, you can sell products directly from Pinterest and Facebook!

Include public relations activities such as email campaigns, sending press releases with company updates, or guest blogging on other sites.

Sponsored blogs help spread the word; this involves paying an influential blogger who has a strong following to review your product.

Build strong SEO to make it easier to find your pages. This means using keywords and understanding how search engines will see your content.

Remarketing is an effective way reach users who have visited your site. They are shown ads while on other websites or social media channels, reminding them to return.

Leverage Analytics to Grow

A huge advantage of online marketing is that it generates statistics on a website’s traffic patterns. Reviewing the data in your site’s Google Analytics reports can help you align sales numbers to traffic, and continually adjust your online marketing strategies based on what’s showing to be most effective.

In addition to reviewing overall data such as number of visitors, pages visited, and length of time on the site, it’s important to look at more in depth KPIs (key performance indicators). These may include where site traffic comes from (ads, social media, organic, etc.), paths users take through the site (i.e., home page > product page > cart), where users leave (i.e., at the cart, which can indicate a deterrent in the shopping process), and pretty much anything else you may want to measure. These measures can provide critical data for product development, operational, and marketing decisions, and help you continually give customers products & services that keep them coming back.